Love you, Dad, I said.
Would there ever be a time I wasn’t waiting to hear the sounds of his sleep from down the hall? I watched the slender moon through my window as it traveled its slow course across the sky. At some point, the house was finally quiet.
Outside, the stars was out. Maybe if I stayed up late enough, I’d get to see the northern lights. I thought of Jesse’s handwriting in the Kleinhaus book. If I do nothing else before I die, I will see the northern lights. The first time I read that, I’d thought it was Tom Hatch who’d wrote it. Felt like the words made him real to me, but he wasn’t never real to me.
The dogs lifted their heads when I got to their houses, then lowered them again when it was clear I didn’t have no treats, and I wasn’t stopping to say hello.
I knocked on the door of the shed then pushed it open.
Jesse was waiting. He smiled when he seen me, got up from the bed and come put his arms round me. I prodded at him, at the closed-off part of him I couldn’t never get to. When he started to pull away, I stopped him. Lingered where I was, him close. The feeling of him comfortable, and the fire in the woodstove crackling and the smell of the shed and the light over everything, same as it always was. It could of been easy to just stay there, ignore all my questions, try to forget Hatch and Helen. Except the gift Helen give me made it impossible.
You okay? His breath grazed my neck.
Fine, I said and flicked the blade of my knife, I moved fast but only with enough pressure to slice through the layers of clothes, to barely pierce his skin.
What—
The word fell out of him and he backed away, his hand plastered over the same spot Hatch had staunched when he stumbled into our yard. Looking for help, I understood now. Not looking for me.
Jesse took his hand away and blinked at the blood, a few drops.
The funny thing about drinking, I told him, is you don’t get to pick what it teaches you. You only get bits and pieces of what’s on a person’s mind, and you almost never get exactly what you’re looking for. At least, that’s how it is with just a taste.
His mind a whirlwind, never settling on a single thought, howling like the wind had howled the night I killed Helen.
I crossed the room step by step, in no hurry. I was between him and the door. And like I had demonstrated before the race, I was stronger than him. By a lot. He knew it, too.
When you drink enough to kill a critter, I went on, that’s a different story. You get everything from that last drink. A whole life. I thought I understood that. How many animals have I killed that way? How many lives have I drunk in? Hundreds?
He backed away, wanting distance from me. Considered rushing me, wondered if he could wrench the knife from my grip. Come up with strategy after strategy, then discarded each one.
How could I of known it would be different with a person? I said.
Silence across the landscape of his head, deafening and brief.
Tom? he asked at last. I thought you said—
I held his shirt with one hand, sliced it open, top to bottom. One layer between us, gone.
I did say, didn’t I? I was certain Hatch would come back. I was worried about you. Worried enough that I got you worried, too, huh? Why was you so worried?
Cut open the next shirt. Seen Hatch in Jesse’s thoughts, at the window of the shed, begging to be let in.
I thought I was protecting you, I told him. Thought I was protecting everyone. And, I’ll be honest, I didn’t think I had no choice. If I didn’t finish the job I started, I would of got in awful trouble.
Shredded his undershirt, neck to hem, and exposed the skin underneath, the wrap he’d used to flatten his chest. Hatch, angry and red-faced in his thoughts. You can’t leave. No one will want you the way I do.
Turns out, I didn’t have a job to finish, I said and held up the knife so he could see the name on the blade.
Jesse’s brain was facile, a word I got from him, he thought it, not about his own wiliness but about Tom, who was also facile, good with a tool, resourceful when he was in a pinch. Fondness there inside Jesse. Surprise at his own ability to fix things. I felt it, the solution falling into place, the first time Jesse run away from somewhere. His own home, stealing away in the night and not leaving a note for his parents, or for Tom, who had showed up a week later at a spot they had talked about, a place they’d planned to go together. Another fight, another night of running. Across the country, all the way to Alaska, and the moment he took the knife in his hand, when he found himself on the edge of the new life he’d chased down, only sort of lost in the woods behind the house. Hatch trailing along behind, and when he got close enough, this one last reminder of Jesse’s old life, the knife went in, so easy it might of acted on its own. Jesse looked down at his own hand, round the handle, and wasn’t sorry. He wouldn’t let himself be. He looked back into Tom’s eyes. Just go home, he said through clenched teeth.
Now, though, he was telling me he had no choice.
You didn’t have to stab him, I said. You could of found another way.
You saw what happened, he said. What Tom did. He was dangerous.
Did I?
The tip of the knife made a dimple in Jesse’s skin, the most pressure I could apply without breaking the surface. A flash of red, the barn, Hatch’s breath on my cheek, on Jesse’s.
Did I see, though? I got pieces. Enough to put together a puzzle. Enough to put it together wrong.
Blood welled, but I didn’t need it. I seen Tom through Jesse, felt his rough hands on my body, his lips on mine. I saw him the first day they, we, met, Tom’s pretty face already marred by old scars from the car accident that had made him an orphan.
I just want to know the truth, I told Jesse and pressed the knife to his skin.
He winced. You don’t need to do that, he said. I’ll tell you, I swear.
You’re right. I don’t need to.
I licked the tip of the knife.
But I want to.
Small cuts. That’s what I learned from the times I had dug the knife into my own skin, them times I went weeks without the woods. Small cuts, small tastes. Helen had give me access to him, but his blood was more vivid than his thoughts, tiny bursts of his life, morsels of truth pouring out of him, coursing through me. He’d left Hatch bleeding in the woods. It wasn’t regret that brought him back to Hatch but worry, he’d heard the two of us tussling and his concern divided itself, part of him feared Tom might be in trouble. A larger part worried that he might of found help too soon. He dropped his pack and run toward the sound of us struggling.
When he found us, he launched himself at me. Shoved harder than he meant. I passed out, never got to hear him say to Tom, again, Please, go. Never got to watch him watching Tom, watching the life drain out of him. That’s what Jesse thought, so unsettled he forgot to go back for his pack when he run away again.
Jesse pushed at me, but he was weaker now, his breath come in gasps and his pulse stuttered.
Don’t worry, I said as I made another cut. We’re almost done.
I never intended to kill him. That’s the truth. I never intended to kill no one.
He sat up so fast, I dropped the knife. It clattered to the floor, and then he was up, a sudden surge of strength, he thought he was struggling for his life. He reached for the knife, he was holding it and I was holding him and both of us wearing his blood, we stood together and circled like dancers round the room, my back to the door, my back to the bed, my back to the wall as I gripped his wrist and he pulled my hair. The strength draining slowly out of him. The blood warm between us. I turned him, my back to the door again, then watched his eyes widen, surprise and fear twisted through him, he gripped my shoulders and threw me aside and only narrowly dodged the axe that sliced through the air and sunk its blade into the wall of the shed.